Celebrity Voice Actor: One of the show's biggest draws was Nathan Lane voicing Spot/Scott and, to a lesser extent, Jerry Stiller as Pretty Boy. While celebrities in animated features had become the norm by that point, having big names star in an animated TV series was always a huge rarity.
Children Voicing Children: Leonard and Leslie's voice actors, Shaun Fleming and Mae Whitman, were twelve and eleven respectively when recording began in 1999. Minor characters are also occasionally voiced by real kids on the show, like Emma.
Greek: Spot, to oneiro enos skylou (Spot, the Dream of a Dog)
Polish: Pupilek (Teacher's Pet)
Brazilian Portuguese: O Cãozinho Esperto (The Smart Doggy)
European Portuguese: Este Cão é um Craque (This Dog is an Ace)
Russian: Любимчик (The Pet)
Spanish: La Mascota de la Clase (The Pet of the Class)
Swedish: En jycke i klassen (A Pooch in Class)
Dawson Casting: Played straight with all the fourth graders except Leonard and Leslie (well, played somewhat straight with them too actually, since they are both about nine or ten and in fourth grade. Shaun Fleming was twelve and Mae Whitman was eleven when recording began and probably in sixth grade).
Dueling Shows: Almost. The KaBlam! short Stewy the Dog Boy was planned to receive a spin-off (which was about a dog wanting to go to school, so he disguises himself as a human), but when Nickelodeon found out about Teacher's Pet, the Stewy spin-off was cancelled. Funnily enough, Gary Baseman, the creator, did a short for KaBlam!, The Louie and Louie Show during it's first season.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: Over the years, the only official release was the VHS/DVD for the feature film, which included the pilot as a bonus feature. To make matters worse, the only torrents available seem to be a couple of Russian-dubbed episodes. At one point, the entire second season was available in Greek before the links were taken down. Only one episode was saved before this happened.
2008-13: While a good handful of VHS recordings were uploaded in late 2008 (and later on in early 2013 by another uploader), Disney took down every episode from YouTube back in June 2013 due to copyright infringement. Later that year, many episodes that were on YouTube were re-uploaded to a Facebook Fan page and later onto Dailymotion in March 2014.
At one point, Netflix had asked Disney for the rights to it, but nothing ever came out of it.
As of January 2017, 37 out of 39 episodes have been found in English (Although some recordings suffer from low quality due to poor recordings), and while the other two missing episodes have been uploaded in Russian or Tagalog, it's still one of the rarest Disney shows to be found, given how poor many of the VHS-rips are (Let Sleeping-Over Dogs Lie, Costume Pity Party, etc)
January-July 2017: The second season aired in English once a week on the Malaysian channel TV3. In mid–June, "The Flipper" and "The Blight Before Christmas" aired, and the recordings were made available online, completing the series.
Cut to November 12, 2019, when the entire series was added to Disney+ in its original widescreen format as opposed to the "Pan and Scan" copies that aired nearly two decades ago.
No Export for You: The series and movie were never released in Japan.
Non-Singing Voice: Whenever Pretty Boy sings opera, you can bet your sweet tuckus that's not Jerry Stiller singing. Averted with any musical number featuring him, however, as he provides his own vocals for the character.
Spot/Scott is a bit of an interesting case. While Lane was able to play his role for the entirety of the first season and half of the second, whenever Spot/Scott would sing in season 2, Kevin Schon would take over instead, likely due to scheduling issues on Lane's part (see The Other Darrin below).
The Other Darrin: Spot/Scott Leadready II was voiced by Nathan Lane for the majority of the series, but throughout various episodes in the second half of season two, Kevin Schon was the one to voice the character since Lane was working on Broadway in The Producers (Schon also previously filled in for Lane as Timon in the animated spin-off).
Recursive Adaptation: The episode "The Nose Knows" is adapted from "Food for Thought", a four-page comic story based on the cartoon that was featured in the October 2000 issue of Disney Adventures.
Release Date Change: The Season Two premiere was originally slated to air on September 15, 2001 before airing the following week. The reason for this was because of the 9/11 attacks, which had all four major networks broadcasting uninterrupted news coverage (Teacher's Pet originally aired on ABC). This resulted in many premieres of TV shows being delayed by a week or two.
Screwed by the Network: The show had great ratings and reviews, however Disney cancelled it in 2002 because of the One Saturday Morning block getting the boot for ABC Kids (only Recess, which was the most popular show on the block, survived the block switch, and it was in reruns). It doesn't help that during its' second season, ABC damned it to a 7:00 AM time-slot, when (most of the time) the target audience would still be asleep.
It did get a theatrical movie, though... which unfortunately bombed in the box office due to poor promotion on Disney's part.
Similarly Named Works: "The Turkey Who Came To Dinner" is also the name of the Rugrats Thanskgiving episode...which has a very similar premise.
An early drawing of the characters have surfaced, showing that Leonard's father was going to be in the show (which includes an early Mary Lou design), but never appeared.
Box Office Bomb: A complete lack of marketing, as well as a decidedly un-Disney appearance (at least according to the filmmakers), resulted in poor sales for The Movie. Disney didn't even advertise the home video release. Some would even say that the film should have been direct to video. Budget: $10 million. Gross: $6.5 million.
Deleted Scene: There was a deleted ending in the movie where Spot dresses up as Scott Leadready again and convinces Leonard’s mom to drive him home (with the other pets holding onto the RV’s ladder), so she doesn’t figure out they are in Florida.
Genre-Killer: Its failure made it the last Disney TV series to be adapted into a theatrical movie, and besides the Phineas and Ferb film being theatrically released in Spain, it's likely to remain that way.note Disney was planning to release a proper theatrical Phineas and Ferb film at one point and the studio originally aimed to release Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022) theatrically before it was announced during pre-production that the film would be streaming exclusively on Disney+, so perhaps not all hope is lost.
In Memoriam: The film is dedicated to Hubcaps, Gary Baseman's dog, who died during production.
The Original Darrin: Nathan Lane returns to voice Spot/Scott after Kevin Schon took over the role for the last few episodes.
Release Date Change: The movie was going to be released on September 5, 2003. For unknown reasons, it was moved to February 2004, and then got moved up to January 16, 2004.
before the links
